After being on ice for well over a decade, Silent Hill has suddenly become an annualized franchise. Kicking off with Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2 in 2024, Konami followed this recreation with the wholly new Silent Hill f in 2025, which shifted the time period and setting of the series for the first time in history. Now, Konami has continued this trajectory with Silent Hill: Townfall, which not only shifts the backdrop of the franchise once again, but pushes it into a first-person perspective rather than the franchise’s traditional third-person viewpoint.
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Despite perfectly replicating the atmosphere that Silent Hill has come to be known for, Townfall doesn’t do much on the gameplay front to provide an engaging experience. While its story is enticing and some of the puzzles are novel, the stealth-rooted mechanics of Townfall often become too much of an annoyance, especially when combined with some aggravating backtracking. The overall result leads to Silent Hill: Townfall being much too cumbersome to actually play over the span of its roughly 15-hour runtime.
Score: 3 out of 5
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Townfall nails the vibes and atmosphere seen throughout the Silent Hill series | Stealth-centric gameplay can often become tedious |
| Story and characters are engaging and keep you pushing forward to understand the mystery at the center | Unforgiving checkpoints can lead to frustration |
| Puzzles are challenging and satisfying to solve | Gameplay doesn’t evolve much at all over the course of the experience |
Townfall’s Setting Is the Game’s True Star
From start to finish, the one thing that Silent Hill: Townfall perfectly executes is the atmosphere seen throughout the larger series. Although the game is set on the fictional Scottish island of St. Amelia and not its typical environment of the northeastern United States, Townfall feels like a true Silent Hill experience through and through. The foggy, dimly lit city keeps you constantly fearful of what’s lying around each corner, with the music and sound design greatly aiding in this effort.
This encapsulation that makes Silent Hill what it is is perhaps even scarier in Townfall thanks to its first-person gameplay. With a more limited viewpoint, I found that the game’s atmosphere felt more amplified than normal. Although Silent Hill has only rarely dabbled in the first-person space, Townfall makes a great case for the series to try this out more often.
Outside of the game’s actual setting, the monsters seen in Townfall are quite eerie as well. While I’m not sure that they match up to some of the most iconic creatures seen throughout the Silent Hill series, the designs of those included are largely great, even if they’re not plentiful. This, when combined with some of the unique horror imagery seen across Townfall, makes it a Silent Hill game that feels quite different from any other.
Townfall’s Core Gameplay Isn’t Enjoyable in the Slightest
What holds back Silent Hill: Townfall from start to finish is the gameplay that it offers. With this being a survival-horror game, Townfall tasks players with trying to avoid combat unless absolutely necessary, as the weapons and ammo you’ll stumble across are not plentiful. This puts a greater focus on stealth in Townfall than perhaps any other Silent Hill game.
On paper, I’m fine with a more stealth-focused Silent Hill game, but the stealth itself in Townfall is quite unsatisfying. Even when equipped with a CRTV device that is meant to show you where enemies are at in the environment, it’s difficult to not get spotted at times by monsters as they’re roaming about. Once you’re found, these monstrous foes often hit very hard, which can result in your health dropping quickly. Although you’re often able to run in other Silent Hill games to escape, you sometimes aren’t afforded the same luxury in Townfall, as you can instead only hide or distract foes with bricks or bottles that you may have found.
What makes this even more annoying is that Townfall’s checkpoints aren’t very plentiful. Unless you’re saving constantly, the game’s autosaves are quite few and far between. So if you happen to get spotted by a monster that quickly takes you down, or even insta-kills you, you’ll be set back quite a bit and will have to slowly inch your way through a location once again, hoping to remain undetected. Essentially, the pace at which you have to play Townfall is much too slow and is more often than not an exercise in patience.
When you’re not trying your best to avoid the eye of some creepy monsters, you’re left solving a variety of environmental puzzles. On this front, I found Townfall to at least largely be in line with past entries in the series. Puzzles provide a great level of difficulty, while not being too obtuse to leave you stuck for longer than you’d like. Any time I figured out a tough puzzle, it felt incredibly satisfying and made me that much more eager for the next one.
Townfall’s Story Does Its Best to Keep You Engaged
The narrative of Silent Hill: Townfall is one that kept me engaged throughout, but it also never reached the heights I hoped it would. The backstories of the three main characters in the game, Simon, Zoe, and Richard, are left a mystery for the majority of the time, as the player is left trying to piece together what happened. This process of slowly uncovering the actual truth at the center of Townfall is something that I greatly enjoyed and kept me pushing forward in the game even when I was growing frustrated with playing it.
Although this storytelling is very much in line with what Silent Hill has always offered, I still think the formula found in Townfall is largely a success. That being said, some of the answers that are provided at the end of Townfall are a bit unsatisfying and left me feeling like there was still a lot of untapped potential with these characters. Although there was room for more exploration with the arcs of Simon, Zoe, and Richard, I do appreciate that Townfall offers up multiple endings, which gives the game a bit more replayability.
I can’t say that I ever expect an enthralling gameplay experience when coming into any Silent Hill game, but Townfall let me down much more than normal on this front. Although there are still some strong moments throughout, it’s often so hard to reach these moments because of how much the game feels like it’s pushing back against you. While veteran Silent Hill players will surely find plenty to enjoy about Townfall, this is a game that I would not recommend newcomers check out to begin their own experience with the franchise.
Silent Hill: Townfall is available now across PS5 and PC platforms. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review and was experienced on a PS5 Pro.
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Image Courtesy of Sony Interactive Entertainment
